In a nutshelltranSMART is an open source platform for storing and exchanging data and testing hypotheses. For the past few year, tranSMART has been conquering the space of data warehousing solutions. It enables the analysis of a variety of data types, including phenotypic and omics data, as well as medical records.

History It was originally developed in 2009, and subsequently open sourced, by Janssen R&D.

In 2013 a number of partners, including the Pistoia Alliance, University of Michigan and Imperial College London established the tranSMART foundation. This foundation was created as a non-profit organization, providing a global open source (and open data) knowledgement platform for scientists from over 300 industry and academic institutions. In May 2017, the tranSMART Foundation merged with the i2b2 Foundation to create an organization with the key mission to advance the field of precision medicine.

tranSMART use cases As mentioned earlier, tranSMART is a data integration, sharing and analysis platform for clinical and translational research. It combines advanced and constantly developing analytics and a web interface, thereby allowing easy access to explore data from multiple domains and studies.

Community The community around tranSMART is dynamic and constantly evolving. A few years ago the primary interest in tranSMART was expressed by large pharmaceutical companies in Europe and the US (including Janssen, Sanofi, Pfizer, Roche) and large academic consortia (including IMI eTRIKS, IMI EMIF).

At the moment we are observing a growing interest among European academic hospitals and medical centers, including large nation-wide initiatives around centralized healthcare and medical data systems.

Since the merger of the i2b2 and tranSMART foundations in May 2017, the two communities proactively collaborate and interact with each other. We are curious to see what the shaping of the new i2b2-tranSMART community will lead to.

The role of The Hyve in tranSMART development

The Hyve has been playing an important role in the development of the platform since our company was established in 2012. Our major contributions to tranSMART include our involvement in a.o. the TraIT/Health RI and the IMI EMIF projects.